Women's brains are different shocker!

[Justwrong68]

Seen a few reports on this study. It's made me think about the lack of study has led to a base level thought that women's brains are similar to men's. The trans debate has spotlit a few differences: the development of fetishes from ptsd (childhood memories realised) and histrionic personality disorders; both pretty much exclusively male in the way they play out.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/19/men-women-brains-work-differently-scientists-discover/

I don’t think Gina Rippon agrees at all.

To misquote Clinton, it all depends on what the meaning of 'are' is.

Inherently, structurally different at the moment of birth? Gina Rippon would disagree with that (with a few very minor 'not proven').

Exposed from the moment of birth to different external influences, which cause them to develop - on average - in different ways. That's pretty incontrovertible, and very much the theme of Rippon's book.

There was a good discussion of this on Woman's Hour on Wednesday. Gina Rippon was on.

I never understood the idea that all of our cells are different, our whole bodies but somehow this stops at the neck. Brain cells have two X chromosomes too. And there is lots of evidence up until now that our brains are different - men have far higher rates of schizophrenia for example and I think brain tumour incidences are different

I can't read that article but does it say that you could accurately predict whether someone is male or female based ob whatever measure this is, or is it a loose correlation that means millions of men and women wouldn't be accurately predicted?

Any talk of sex differences in brains needs to state whether it's for all men or women or a general trend. The latter can be extremely useful but it doesn't help us to say you are a woman therefore you are more xyz than all men - that can be dangerous.

This is the most important takeaway:

“The key issue is whether these differences are a product of sex-specific, biological influences, or of brain-changing gendered experiences. Or both. Are we really looking at sex differences? Or gender differences?"

“Or, acknowledging that almost all brain–shaping factors are dynamically entangled products of both sex and gender influences, are we looking at what should be called sex/gender differences?”

Looking at large samples from different countries with different approaches to gender relations might give a clue to this.